Mr. Martin Cooney:

We made submissions to the Commission on the Defence Forces regarding a specialist reserve comprised of personnel with specific skills the Defence Forces need at certain times. They might not face the same service requirements as regards turning up during the week and at weekends but could be called upon when needed. The commission came to a point where it said the Reserve was facing such fundamental problems, as Mr. Gargan has alluded to, that it would find it very difficult to get those people in.

In respect of one of the submissions, one of the two Nordic generals on the commission was absolutely astounded that we did not have partnerships with private industry. He could not understand why we did not have engagement with private industry, which speaks to the Senator's point. He said that, when their forces want to go overseas, they partner with a logistics firm. There are reservists at officer level or management level. They put a uniform on them and there is then direct interoperability because they can operate with their military hat on while also giving directions in their own companies to get the stuff where it needs to go. For many reasons, it is an absolute travesty that we have not done that. There is no ability for personnel to come out of the Defence Forces and into roles in those companies on which we rely so heavily.

We should look at the amount of data centres and subsea cables we have in this State. There is an enormous amount of finance here. We are the second biggest administrator of funds in the world. Some 80% of the world's aircraft financing is handled here. These are things that brought this country from being a Second World country in the 1980s to a First World pioneer in many areas and we have nothing to protect the infrastructure all of these industries rely on. Let us think about that. We do not have anything to protect it. A ship can go out in the sea to mess with our cables and someone in a trawler has to go out to attack it. A fisherman has to go out. We do not have the ability to protect that infrastructure in a country that relies very heavily on foreign direct investment. That is absolutely crazy. Should we have partnerships with those people? Yes, we should. We should be talking to Facebook, Google and other companies and asking what they need from us to make sure they stay here employing their thousands of people and paying the taxes they pay here that have made this country a country with a surplus. We should be asking them how to keep them here for the long term and what we can do to support them. It is not the case that we have to fund it all. Joint initiatives mean that the private sector also funds it. It is what the Americans do all of the time. I would always say that these are brain-dead ideas. Why are we not doing these things?